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FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon released the following statement regarding U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s announcement of a plan to streamline the leasing permit process to comply with the legal requirement that permits be handled within 30 days.

Every day there are legions of new economists who dismiss the Donald Trump economic agenda and his forecast of 3 percent growth as a wild-eyed fantasy. The consensus is that the economy “can’t possibly grow at 3 percent” says The Wall Street Journal. “Slow growth is the new norm, so get used to it,” writes Rucir Sharma, Morgan Stanley, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley in Foreign Affairs magazine this month.

If one is looking for another reason to support Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to serve as President-elect Donald Trump's administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a new report from the American Action Forum explains how environmental regulations will negative impact the economy over the next few decades.

Near the very end of President George W. Bush's second term in January 2009, economist Veronique de Rugy challenged the assertion by then-President-elect Barack Obama that the two-term Republican had "take[n] a hands-off approach to regulation." De Rugy lamented that the Bush administration, in fact, took a relatively heavy-handed approach to regulation.

A federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) is supposed to govern how regulations are developed and implemented. The APA requires providing notice to the public of the content of regulations at several steps during the regulatory process and giving the public an opportunity to participate in the regulatory process. This is intended to allow scrutiny of regulatory actions and prevent secret negotiations among regulators behind closed doors.

In a significant victory for basic law and order, a federal court in Wyoming Tuesday affirmed a basic constitutional concept: that the executive branch must comply with laws passed by Congress. Such is the power and unaccountability of the regulatory state that this counts as news.

President Obama has released the regulatory agenda for the final months of his administration. This plan, known as the Unified Agenda, is an overview of the proposed rules and regulations federal bureaucrats plan to issue before the newly elected administration takes over in January 2017.

The "drop dead date" for federal regulations is fast approaching and we are expecting more overreaching proposals. This is the last date that proposed rules can be finalized by the Obama administration, without fear that the next President will overturn them under the Congressional Review Act. Regulatory agencies are expected to release a flood of regulations before this date. This regulatory outburst, first noted in the final days of the Carter Administration, is known as "midnight regulations."

“School meals matter!” says the USDA’s guide for parents. The content of your child’s plate has been added to the long list of things that, according to the Obama Administration, must be regulated by the federal government. Those who are not convinced by the USDA’s less-than-compelling evidence that the government should dictate the diets of America’s schoolchildren should be prepared to pay a hefty fine. As if Common Core had not done enough damage to our children’s schools, the federal government is now planning to sic its bureaucrats on school cafeterias.